TRULY MIGHTY: A duck, her nine eggs and the hockey team share a name and a home. LEONARD ORTIZ, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

HOME SWEET TREE

Barricades protect a duck that has made a nest outside the southeast entrance of the Pond. LEONARD ORTIZ, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

ANAHEIM - In a planter at the foot of a palm tree, a few yards from the southeast entrance of the arena where the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim are preparing for their next hockey playoff game, there is one duck - a mallard - who is taking a rest.

On her nest.

You can see her nestled, hidden beneath long blades of green foliage, atop a heap of feathers and twigs and nine eggs.

Camouflaged against the dark-brown soil, she is perfectly quiet, her brown body still, making the only movement the flickering glint of sunshine off her black eyes.

A few hockey fans and a couple of (human) Ducks discovered the black and tan mallard with the white-flecked tail in late April, when the hockey team was battling through its Western Conference quarterfinal series against the Calgary Flames.

"Some people thought it was an omen, a good-luck charm, a new fan or something right out of a fairy tale," says Julie Sediq, the arena's media relations director.

This is a modern-day sports-themed rendition of "Make Way for Ducklings," Robert McCloskey's Caldecott Award-winning children's book about "Mrs. Mallard" building a nest in downtown Boston, a couple busy intersections from the Charles River.

Only today, there's no raging river or high-water stream that's a webbed-footer's waddle away. Just the concrete, glass and marble arena called the Pond - Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim.

A month ago, deeper water waved between the banks of the Santa Ana River, which snakes around the arena's east parking lots.

Today, a few shallow puddles dot the dried-up riverbed, providing barely enough water to make a splash. Short of wading into backyard pools, the duck would need to take the 57 Freeway to get to a real pond.

"This probably seemed like a good place to make a nest when there was water in the river," says Elta Chapman, an animal keeper at the Santa Ana Zoo.

"She'll run into some problems leading the ducklings in a line to water without rain."

Chapman says another concern is that the duck might be vulnerable to predators. But that's not a top threat since the Nashville hockey team - the Predators - was eliminated earlier in the postseason.

"This is the season for nesting," she says. "It's illegal to disturb the nest, even if it seems out of place."

So for 28 days, the Pond will be home to this duck as well. Her nine ducklings could hatch next week, when the Mighty Ducks are in the throes of their next playoff series, the Western Conference Finals.

Meanwhile, a lot of curious questions have been quacking people up around here.

Among them: Did this duck show up for one of the Pond's career fairs to apply for a mascot job? Is this sitting duck a Ducks hockey fan? Or a decoy spy? Can this duck read, since only a schooled duck would think there's actually water inside a building called the Pond?

Not trying to be foul, Pond officials called Orange County Animal Care Services about three weeks ago to talk about their new resident. The office advised Pond workers to protect the nest and call back once the eggs hatch so animal control workers can lead - or perhaps carry - these ducks to water.

For now, Pond security has put crowd-control barricades around the palm tree and nest. A guard keeps passersby at a distance on game nights.

"This is the only duck that doesn't talk on game day," jokes Merit Tully, an assistant communications director for the Mighty Ducks. "But we're used to not having our mascots talk."

Wild Wing, the white-feathered, hockey-sweater donning, life-sized character immortalized in a bronze statue outside the Pond's south entrance, had no comment.

The last time Wild Wing made a noise - a scream, many recalled - was when the character caught on fire while flying from the arena rafters through a ring of flames during a pre-game stunt in the mid-1990s. (That explains why some fans used to call the mascot "Hot Wings.")

It's not rare for a sports team to have a real animal for a mascot. USC, for one, has its horse, Traveler, stampede across the Coliseum field before football games. Detroit Red Wings fans have been known to smuggle in octopi and toss the slimy, tentacled seafood on the ice to celebrate goals. (The octopi are dead, usually.)

But the Mighty Ducks, a franchise that was born in 1993 and hatched from a Disney motion picture about a rag-tag youth hockey team, haven't had a feathered fan quite like this duck.

Two players - relative ducklings, center Ryan Getzlaf and right wing Corey Perry, both 21, eyed the nest when the team charter bus, returning the team from Western Conference quarterfinals Game 5 in Calgary, stopped near there May 1 about 3 a.m.

Hockey players, renown for being superstitious, don't know if this duck might be part of their luck in the Mighty Ducks fairytale season, which will resume Friday against the Edmonton Oilers.

Perhaps this duck - the only team-affiliated animal of American descent on the playoff roster besides center Todd Marchant of Buffalo, N.Y. - could become part of the young team's lore.

At home games, fans blow into plastic duck callers ($7 at the Team Store), quacking from the highest parts of the arena. Earlier this season, one fan began shaking a genuine cowbell, becoming the focus of an in-game comedy sketch on the center ice DiamondVision jumbo TV and spawning a line of souvenir black "more cowbell" T-shirts and white miniature cowbells ($8).

Team marketing gurus have yet to sign the nesting mallard to any promotional deals. A few Pond officials have been trying to name her. They're proud to note this duck might be the only one on the Canadian and European-loaded player roster who's from the United States.

For now, she's "The Duck," of Anaheim, a goalie of sorts, protecting her nets, er, nest. She has become a family pet to this hockey club and its fans.

On Tuesday morning, a few torn pieces of white bread were scattered atop the soil a few inches from the duck's dark bill. A couple cigarette butts, a crumpled silver foil wrapper and a bent plastic straw also littered her surroundings.

"Actually, bread is a very bad thing for the duck," Chapman says. "If someone wanted to help it, they could leave a bowl of water close to help her get through the hot afternoons."

The duck doesn't need to eat or drink for the 28 days she sits atop her eggs to keep them warm.

"We shouldn't seem so surprised. This is nature," says Chapman, making sense of this duck-out-of-water story.

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